Black Catholics create a home in Oregon

For a long time, Patricia Bradley, a black Catholic, felt alienated in her own church.

“We’ve always been a double minority,” she said. “There are so few Catholics who are black, and there are so few blacks who are Catholic.”

However, when she moved to Portland, Bradley was invited to a meeting of the African American Catholic Community of Oregon, and in it she discovered an organization that was bringing black laity together.

“It was refreshing to see other black Catholics that were organized,” she said. “They were authentically Catholic, not people who had been disenfranchised from other religions. They were Catholics because they wanted to be Catholics.”

That group, founded in Portland in 1976 by Sam Jackson and Gail Washington, continues to be active today, with members coordinating annual events like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Mass, celebrated each January at St. Mary’s Cathedral, and a fall revival, hosted at Immaculate Heart or St. Andrew parishes.

Bradley is secretary of the executive committee, which meets monthly – slightly more frequently than the quarterly general membership meetings. It’s a small, but active group.

Originally called the Portland Black Catholic Lay Caucus, the group was originally part of a national organization, the National Black Catholic Congress, with various branches throughout the country that aim to get black Catholics more involved in all aspects of church activities, including the priesthood.

“We were all feeling that black Catholics were almost considered to be invisible in the Catholic Church,” Jackson said. “We didn’t feel included in the conversation with respect to Catholic activities in a lot of the parishes, locally and throughout the state.”

Jackson said they also didn’t feel recognized on the archdiocesan level, so one of the organization’s first moves was to approach then-Archbishop Edward Howard.

They got a warm reception, Jackson said.  “We wanted to try to assist the archdiocesan churches in becoming more welcoming to black Catholics and other people of color, and to get them to recognize that we had something to contribute in all activities with respect to the church,” Jackson said.

One aim of the organization throughout the years has been to increase the number of African-Americans or people of color involved on boards and commissions at the parish and diocesan level. The group also serves as a sounding board to the archbishop in affairs that matter to Oregon’s black community.

In addition to the revival and the MLK Mass, the group – with the assistance of the Ladies of Peter Claver, another African-American lay organization – runs a summer vacation Bible camp at Immaculate Heart every August. The two-week-long camp, for elementary school-aged youth, is open to all youngsters who want a scripture-based summer experience, with an opportunity for field trips. It’s not just open to students in the North/Northeast neighborhoods or Catholic youths, but anyone who wishes to sign up.

The revivals, in the fall, aren’t what they used to be when Bradley was little.

“It’s no longer where you were preached to about fire and brimstones, it is more of a scripture- and spiritually based call to service and action, and a time for reflection,” she said.

The MLK Mass in the winter is open to the public, of course, as a time to honor the memory of Dr. King.

In recent years, the summer activity, a retreat, has flagged, but the organization is currently working to resurrect the tradition. It’s a time for the general membership to gather and share stories and information from their travels and research throughout the year. For instance, one of the organization’s members recently attended a conference for black Catholic women, and she would return and report on the trip.

Bradley sees struggles and successes ahead for the organization. Like many other Catholic groups, they have had a hard time enticing young people to get involved. The organization is making changes in its vacation Bible camp to help give children momentum to continue to be involved as they move into their middle and high school years.

Despite the trouble recruiting youth members, other goals of the organization are still on track, Bradley said.

One mechanism for spreading knowledge of those traditions are a series of Josephite calendar sales each year, a date book that indicates the feast days of black and African Catholics.

Next year, Bradley said, they plan to send a quantity of those calendars as gifts to all the schools in the archdiocese so kids can learn about the saints and see art with images of black angels, saints, Jesus and Mary.

“We are making some inroads on letting people know that we have authentically Catholic traditions,” she said.

Other members of the executive committee are: Emma Jackson Ford, chairwoman; Lucida Tate, past chairwoman; Jackson, member emeritus; Maggie Gibson, treasurer; and Mary Harvey, and Evelyn and Ron Couser, members at large.

"We've always been a double minority,” she said. “There are so few Catholics who are black, and there are so few blacks who are Catholic”....Originally called the Portland Black Catholic Lay Caucus, the group was originally part of a national organization, the National Black Catholic Congress, with various branches throughout the country that aim to get black Catholics more involved in all aspects of church activities, including the priesthood.

Catholics have become a slightly more affluent group and the current Catholic population has a disproportionately low number of blacks, who make up one out of every seven Americans but only one out of every 25 Catholics, and high number of Hispanics, according to the Barna Group.
-- from the 2007 thread Survey: Catholics Adapt to Culture at Cost of Committed Faith

“We’ve always been a double minority,” she said. “There are so few Catholics who are black, and there are so few blacks who are Catholic.”

They can go anywhere and live anywhere...and they choose to segregate themselves.

Good grief.

the National Black Catholic Congress, with various branches throughout the country that aim to get black Catholics more involved

Racial division in the church must stop. When churches are multi-racial, color is no longer an issue, and the church and be about the Lord's work.

One of my saints from early child-hood is St. Martin De Porres - a black saint who I talk to daily.

I can’t help but wonder if they’re a “social justice” crew, not unlike the Chicago group, who self-secregate for perhaps doubious purposes otherwise why not integrate like everyone else.

One of my saints from early child-hood is St. Martin De Porres - a black saint who I talk to daily. I can’t help but wonder if they’re a “social justice” crew, not unlike the Chicago group, who self-secregate for perhaps doubious purposes otherwise why not integrate like everyone else.

I could see that, and we are talking about Oregon which is liberal country. IIRC 90% of the black Protestant vote (and the black vote overall) went for Obama in 2008 while 55-65% of the overall Protestant vote went for McCain. I don't have any numbers breaking down the Catholic vote along racial lines, but I could imagine something similar.

St. Dominic’s here has “separate” ethnic groups. The Philipinos have a St Vincent de Paul Society which does good work in the parish. Other groups have organized as Catholic groups in the parish rather than as Race groups. They do not lobby for “greater representation” in the administration(a mighty limited venue) but rather create structures in the parish that are integral parts of the parish and give them an “over-representation” in the active running of parish activities. Membership in the groups is not limited and over time they become less and less homogeneous. The organizing spark is “how do we help the parish? win souls? help the poor? and the societies start out as “ethnic” because groups of friends and relatives get together and start them.
The Philipinos, Vietnamese, Latinos, etc, organize as Catholics with a Catholic purpose rather than as ethnics with a political purpose.

Hmm, where I’m from in Southern Louisiana...mostly black/creole and mostly Catholic. There are also a lot of black Catholics in SE Texas, Southern Mississippi, and the San Fran/Oakland area.

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